Samson
by VivaLaVida1704
Summary: [Sequel to Lucky Thirteen] He's still cautious. She's still careless. He's still rational. She's still reckless. She's still his world and he's still hers but things are changing. Choices have been made that they don't get to take back. Words said and bullets fired. But you know what they say. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Much closer. Too close. Vick/OC.


**Well hi everyone! How goes it? I know I promised this a very long time ago but it's taken a long time to get round to actually deciding what I wanted to do with it. For those of you that don't know this is a sequel to another story of mine Lucky Thirteen, which you don't necessarily (I think) have to have read before this but it probs would help to check it out first. Anyway, I hope this is good and that you like it – I definitely worked hard on it that's for sure!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Finding Sky (unfortunately when I say 'Vick is mine' I'm joking)**

**If you read this and like it/hate it/ loathe it/ want to eat it let me know in a review? You'd be surprised how helpful as a writer they are!**

**Chapter One**

**Send me a sign, turn back the clock**

**Vick**

_(dig up the bones but leave the soul alone)_

_I'm trapped. Caged in. Above me and around me and below me are expressionless, vacant grey walls. In between them is darkness. Darkness and me. I can't breathe, can't speak, can't move. The darkness is inside me, tugging at me, tearing at me, choking me, ripping me apart from the inside out. I try to open my mouth to scream but I gag on the shadows, on the way they taste acrid and bitter in my mouth like ashes. I don't remember how I got here, can't remember how to get out, can't even remember my own name…_

"Agent Benedict?"

I jolt back into consciousness so fast I bang my knees on the edge of the table. Biting my tongue against the words desperate to ripple out I turn to my supervisor, a broad-shouldered, thick-necked, weather-beaten man for whom the word 'redneck' might as well have been invented for. He spoke in a thick southern drawl that sounded like he was copying it from something he heard on the TV, something that would've been funny if I hadn't been the only agent in the room who didn't sound exactly the same.

I may have hated my last job but God I missed Denver sometimes.

"Sorry Agent Gregory, won't happen again."

"We boring you Special Agent?"

"No sir," I shake my head, gritting my teeth and curling my fingers into fists under the table. The things that man made me think about doing all involved a gun, a narrow alley and darkness. It was almost a shame the FBI had such a negative opinion of homicide.

"No sir," I repeated instead. "I'm just tired."

"We're all tired, Agent Benedict, every last one of us. Just because you're some hotshot from out West doesn't excuse you. No sir it does not," Gregory got to his feet, surprisingly agile for a man his size and age.

_Don't think that, that's something Thirteen would think and if you start thinking like Thirteen you're gonna end up looking for a new job before the meeting's finished. _

"You might have come from Denver with glowing reports," Agent Gregory was still talking. ''And you might have been awarded for your exceptional bravery – and I won't deny it, no sir I won't, you are easily the most talented man in this room – but that _talent _Agent Benedict will not help us catch us a serial killer if that _talent _is asleep now will it?"

"No sir, it won't, I'm sorry sir," I say, hating myself with every word, feeling every second that drags past like it's a knife twisting inside my back. And then because I'm an idiot – "But for the record it's not a serial killer sir."

Gregory turns to look at me with an expression on his face that makes me wonder if his eyes are going to pop out of their sockets. "Do explain that theory, _please." _

I look down at the crime scene photos in front of me and wonder if I'm about to throw up. Just looking at them, at the mutilated flesh and the scorch marks and the holes where faces once were makes me feel empty inside, hollow. Like just looking at them sucks the light out of me, the hope and the courage – all the things I like about myself or the things other people like. Without them I'm just a hole, just a body, a machine. It's like I'm losing myself, like I'm plummeting down, down, down into darkness. I've seen hundreds of bodies and spoken to the killers and let their words and their evil and the poison that just seems to drip black and sticky from their teeth wash over me and never felt a thing, never even flinched.

Until one of the crime scene photos came to life right in front of me, until it became not just a photo but a girl. A girl with a name and a face and a soul and a bright, brilliant incandescent light who can hypnotise you without even opening her mouth. A girl I fell in love me, a girl who built me up and ripped me back down into little pieces without even knowing she was doing it.

"You ok Vick?" Sammy LaMontagne, the agent sat next to me nudges me with his elbow. I nod and let my eyes wander over the pictures one last time – is there anything I've missed, anything I got wrong?

"It's not a serial _killer_," I say slowly, cautiously. "Because there's more than one of them, a group I'd say – if you look at victim A," I hold up a photo of a black man in his fifties who was murdered on the Canadian border. "There's no way just one person could've killed him and then moved and re-arranged the body like that. They're taking victims from their work places – which means they must scout out the work-places first and then need a distraction, possibly more than one remember nobody ever suspects a thing - and then driving them out into the middle of nowhere and doing _this_…you have any idea how long that would take if you were doing it by yourself?"

I take one last look down at the photos. In every one, no matter whether the victim is the old man or the college basketball star, the high-powered businesswoman or the nanny, the corpses lie with their hands on their stomachs like they fell asleep, like they're just resting. Around the body, painstakingly placed, one by one, are feathers. Jet black, like someone spilled ink over them. Arranged around the bodies so they look like wings, each victim an angel that crashed back down to earth before they could work out how to catch themselves, cast down and thrown out.

"I've got someone doing some research but I think I've found some suspects – a group that calls themselves 'Godfrey's Angels'."

Sammy turns to me. "Who the hell is Godfrey?"

I take a deep breath and grimace.

"I have literally no idea."

**Thirteen**

_(Hey open wide here comes original sin)_

Everything looks simpler if you're staring at it down a telescopic lens. Clearer, somehow. More precise, more perfect, more exact.

"That's really hot Angela," I murmur. "Just hold that for one second – perfect."

I shift my finger, a flash, then the image is frozen forever. Perfect, simple, flawless.

_How did my life end up this easy? This…good? I don't even have words for it, my tongue just trips itself up, stumbles and flounders and falls. _

The bride comes running towards me as quickly as her intricate, elaborate miraculous dress and viscious-looking stilettos will allow, looking for all the world like some kind of fairy that took a wrong turn and somehow ended up in Hansard, North Carolina.

"Oh my goodness thank you so much Thirteen," Angela gushes and oddly enough her excitement, her peppiness, her complete and total effervescent joy just tugs at the corners of my mouth a little. Once upon a time I would have hated her for her happiness, resented it, wanted it for my own. It's truly amazing the things several stab wounds and a bullet to the chest can change.

"I really appreciate it, especially since I know weddings aren't really your scene but I was given one of your prints as a graduation present and your photos are just so perfect," she smiles that glowing, beaming, just-married smile and all I want to do is wrap my arms around her and give her a hug. That and make comments on how in basically every movie ever this is precisely the moment when something horrible happens and doesn't she know that and why is she jinxing herself like this? But I won't say that, I really wouldn't say that, I can already imagine Vick's face, his wide-eyed incredulity, the way his face would twist and war with itself between laughter and sternness.

Instead I just pat the camera around my neck, the one he had made for me, the one that makes me feel safe just having it because it's a piece of Vick, a piece of him that's always there. "Don't thank me," I say. "Thank Wallace here. Besides," I wince slightly. "I'm really just here to steal all your ideas for my shindig."

"Oh you're getting married?" If it was possible for Angela's face to light up anymore it does, like someone's flicked a switch and turned it on, like the brightness before was just a reflection.

I hope my smile doesn't look too much like a grimace. "I am if my boyfriend has anything to do with it."

I bite my lip at the confusion tugging at Angela's face. How could she possibly understand the idea of a soulfinder? The thought that I have found my perfect other half, my soul's carbon copy, the one human being that I was made for and that was made for me? How could I ever explain that I don't need a ring to remind me of him and everything that he is and what he means. I don't need anything for that, he's inside my head, always with me, always there.

I can't. I just can't. I wouldn't even know where to start and so instead I just shrug. "I already know I want to spend the rest of my life with him," I say. "I mean, I want to get old with him and be in our little rockers on the porch together and everything. I just guess I don't want the hassle of inviting a load of people to witness what I already know."

Angela shrugs, smiles sympathetically. "Fair enough," she says. "But don't you think –,"

I never find out what I think.

I pull my phone out of my pocket to check the time and see the message waiting for me there, sneering out at me, sniggering at the way it made me jump, made my heart stop and stare, made my breath freeze in my trachea.

_From: Unknown Number_

_WE received your contact details from a mutual friend of ours shortly before he died. WE have need of your special services. WE are not to be toyed with, not to be fooled or tricked like you tricked our friend. WE know where you live, where you work, where your soulfinder and his parents and his siblings live and work. Tell anyone about US and we'll kill them one by one. And then WE'LL come for you._

_GA _

I'm not breathing anymore. I can feel my heart trembling in my chest begging for oxygen but I just can't breathe, can't remember how to. _It's a trick _I try and tell myself. _It's not real it means nothing. _I worked for hundreds of people before I worked for Callum, tracking down people for them, across countries and oceans and hemispheres. Names didn't matter appearance didn't matter. Whoever you were, wherever you were I would find you. It's probably just one of those employers, trying to scare me, trying to get even for what Vick and his family did to Callum.

And yet still the fear trickles down my spine, ice-cold and poisonous, leeching into my blood, into my bones. Nausea writhes in the pit of my stomach, wriggles and lurches and twists.

I can't stay here, I've got to go, got to run. If I stay in this place much longer I'll suffocate, asphyxiate, choke on my own fear.

"Hey, I've got to go, give me a ring when you get back from your honeymoon and we'll make an appointment for you to come and choose which pictures you want in the album ok?" I'm already walking as I garble the words, spitting out the first thing that comes to mind, not even sure if it makes any sense.

"You can't stay for a drink?" Angela's eyes widen. She's a nice girl, sweet and kind and all the things I keep telling myself I should be more of. Some part of me wants to stay, wants to be her friend. I have friends now, more than I've had for the rest of my life put together but something about her is special, something about her makes me want to be better than I am, more than I am. She doesn't bring out the good in me, she just reminds me that there are parts of me that need to be better.

Too bad the rest of me is screaming, howling, caterwauling, too bad I need to run before I lose my mind, before I sleep deep down into terror and panic.

"I can't, I really am sorry," I say, but my mouth is on autopilot, speaking without even knowing what it's saying.

All I can think of is – it's happening again, it's all repeating itself.

Just when I thought it was all over.

As if I'm that lucky.

**They don't have names anymore**

_(This is it, the apocalypse)_

_They stand and they wait, though for what they could never tell you. They could never tell anyone anything. _

_He ripped out their tongues when they swore to follow him, Savants don't need tongues to speak, don't need anything but their heads and those he left untouched. _

_So not only do they wait, they wait in silence. For an order, maybe, or a scream. _

_The girl watches them wide-eyed, staring, watchful. It doesn't matter how powerful a Savant you are, you can't protect yourself from them – they're avenging angels, born to fight off demons and leeches and all those who would threaten the one thing that means more to them than their petty, useless, flimsy lives._

_But they won't touch the girl until their told to. For all they know she could be a new recruit, a new brother or sister. He'll tell them when they're ready and they'll do as they're told. _

_Savant blood is precious after all. Priceless._

_As long as it's pure._

**Vick**

_(I'm coming home to you – every night, every night, every night)_

"Hey Vick you want to get a drink or something?" For a guy who looked like he spent most of high-school being thrown into a dumpster Sammy can move when he has to. He grabs my arm as I climb into my car and for just a second I wish I wasn't about to shake my head.

"It's just you know, we're partners now and everything and I guess I just thought we should get to know each other a little bit more,"

"Sorry man I really can't – I mean seriously I would love to. Trust me the only person who likes tequila every once in a while more than me is my underaged brother who hasn't learnt yet that there are other drinks out there but it's Wednesday so Thirteen has decreed it's movie night but maybe some day when it's not weekly torture day you could come over or something?"

And just like that Sammy's nodding and smiling and I'm getting into my car and hitting the accelerator before he can change his mind. I like him, I do, but I can already feel the uneasiness set in, the spinning feeling. Staying away from Thirteen, not being near her, not seeing her, not hearing her laugh or watching the way she can never sit still, the way she's always jolting or twitching or jumping – it hurts. It feels like being torn apart, like being ripped into shreds. Living without oxygen would be easier than living without her. She's like learning to breathe again.

The house by the lake looks like something out of Gone with the Wind, something Thirteen cares more about than I do and is only five minutes from work, something I like way more than she does and yet her disgrace of a beaten-up Chevy truck is already slung across the driveway when I pull up. I clamber out of the car, fumbling around my bag and my gun and a pile of folders I desperately wish I could burn until they're nothing more than ash and dust and used-up words for my car keys.

I haven't stepped one foot across the threshold before her mind's sliding into mine, smoothly effortlessly, until I can't remember whose thoughts are whose.

"Can you please leave your creepy FBI shit in the hall?" Thirteen's drawl assails my ears even as I'm about to dump my bags in the living room.

I stop still, already feeling the grin teasing the edges of my mouth and raise my eyebrows at the closed kitchen door.

"How do you know it's _creepy _FBI shit as opposed to _boring _FBI shit?"

"It's creepy isn't it?"

"Yeah pretty much." I take a perverse pleasure into flinging the folders down, putting my anger and my frustration and that hollow, empty, draining horror that keeps tugging at my stomach and the back of my throat into that throw so that they crash satisfactorily onto the tile.

I still can't get the feeling out of my head, the feeling like I'm falling, like I'm stranded, like the darkness is getting closer even though I'm doing everything I can think of to keep it away.

"What's up Trouble?" I ask as I swing into the kitchen and not even the feel of Thirteen in my arms, one hand pressed against the small of her back, my fingers twisted in her long red curls, her face resting against mine can make me feel any less sick, any less nervous.

"I'm…fine," she drawls, her voice still as lazy as ever but a crease darkening her forehead, something in her eyes that I can't quite read. "How are you?"

I think of the photos waiting for me in the hall. Think of the victims posed like shattered angels smashed on the floor. Think of the expectancy in the pit of my stomach, the waiting feeling, like a storm's about to break right over our heads, like life's about to come crashing around our ears.

"Yeah. I'm fine too."

**So…errr..was it ok? Did you hate it? Let me know please? I'll give you cookies? **


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